Battling / Specific Battling Concepts

One of the best ways to improve in VGC is to analyze your own battles. There can be a lot to break down in just one game, so I want to highlight some of the key areas I focus on when reviewing my matches.

Lead Match Up

After seeing my opponent’s leads, I always like to ask myself what combination of Pokémon on my team can deal with their lead the best. If it’s not the lead I selected, I ask myself why I chose this specific lead.

Your Pokémon Selection

It’s helpful to reflect on each Pokémon you selected (leads and back) and ask how much they contributed to the battle. In the same vein, it’s also helpful to reflect on the two Pokémon you did NOT bring into the battle and ask if they could have replaced any of the four you brought.

Any turn that involves luck/RNG

Luck is undoubtedly an element of Pokémon, but the best players are able to mitigate it and reduce its impact on a match. It’s helpful to look at any turn that involves any luck/RNG & ask yourself how that turn would have played out if you remove that luck/RNG. [It’s also very important to think more about the BIG picture - not just that specific turn, but all the turns leading up to it as well]

Damage Calculations

In a battle, you’ll generally estimate a ton of different damage calculations throughout the match. I like to look back and ask myself 1) how accurate my “internal” calculations were 2) if there were any moves I potentially missed out on because I was unsure how much damage they would do.

General Feeling

Throughout a battle, I find that I generally feel good, neutral, or bad as each turn starts. I like to pay attention to when my feelings shift (e.g. neutral -> bad, good -> bad) & identify the cause of that. 

Turn-by-turn analysis

I like to walk through each individual turn and ask myself: 

Did I make the best possible play, regardless of what my opponent could go for? If not, did I miss the best possible play? Why was I not able to recognize it at the moment?

Did I anticipate my opponent’s move as an option? (Often, when the answer to this question is NO, it leads to big swings/surprises)

If I knew my opponent was going to go for their specific play this turn, would I go for the same play I initially went for? 

Was my play this turn unnecessarily risky? Even if it worked out, was there a way my opponent could have punished me that they missed?

MOST IMPORTANT TURN - it’s more productive if you can find the most important turns (e.g. for me, these are turns that change my general feeling significantly / turns that feel like they essentially decide the game) & analyze those to the best of your ability

Sometimes, it’s just a match-up/team issue

There will be times where you feel helpless, even after evaluating all the above options. The team you select & how it matches up against your opponent’s is a big element to this game, which is why team-building is so important. It’s important to identify when you are at a significant disadvantage because of the team/match-up.

How do you identify that it’s a match-up/team issue?

• You constantly feel the need to make predictions and make risky plays

• You can’t handle a specific Pokémon or group of Pokémon on your opponent’s team well (e.g. you have very little to hit your opponent’s strongest options)

• Your strongest Pokémon simply just don’t do enough damage (this often is tied to a Pokémon requiring too much effort to get going - e.g. it needs a turn to set-up, it needs a partner to enable it. Other issues include: the Pokémon has bad typing, it relies too heavily on one-two attacks

• You cannot figure out a neutral/strong lead option against the lead that your opponent brought

• You generally feel overwhelmed - even though you feel like you are playing well, you still cannot win games

I will always try to analyze my battles as much as possible before concluding it’s a match-up/team issue.

Conclusion

As you can probably tell, there are a ton of different factors you can review after a battle. If I had to highlight the order in which I personally review games in, I’d go in the following order:

1. The turn that decided the match (this doesn’t necessarily have to be the final turn - it’s the turn that I generally define as one player gaining an insurmountable lead over the other)

2. Other specific turns where I felt like I did not make the best possible play / did not properly anticipate my opponent’s play 

3. Overall Pokémon selection (could one of the two Pokémon I did not bring contribute more)

4. Lead match-up (if I knew my opponent was going to lead with their lead, do I have a better lead combination to deal with it? Was it possible to anticipate my opponent’s specific lead?

5. Overall match-up analysis

There’s no right or wrong way to analyze games, but in my opinion, it’s good to thoroughly assess every part of the game, which is why I find it useful to break it down into a couple of key areas. Battles are deeply complex, and you can do a ton of reflection on even a singular turn. 

I’d also like to remind you to not focus as much on results-based analysis - just because a play didn’t work out doesn’t necessarily make it incorrect (and vice versa: just because a play DID work out doesn’t necessarily make it good). If you focus too much solely on results, you’ll often miss ways to improve in the victories that you have.

Overall, I think that being able to objectively analyze your games and highlight both your good and bad plays is a key skill in developing as a player! No one likes losing, but the great thing about losses is that you can learn so much from them. If you’re able to take your learnings and apply them to future games, you will surely increase your chance of success.